Whenever I think of the rare wholly successful movies adaptations of books, I always think of two movies: Friday Night Lights and About a Boy. In both cases, the movies were as good as the books, and in the case of Friday Night Lights, the television series was even better. The guy behind Friday Night Lights (and Parenthood), Jason Katims, will be taking on About a Boy for NBC, which has picked up the pilot. It’ll be a single-camera comedy about a slacker whose life is upended when a young boy and his single mother move next door. NBC attempted also attempted an About a Boy TV series in 2003 with Patrick Dempsey. (via)

Apart from the James Bond movies – the novels vary in quality and plot alarmingly; anyone ever read “You Only LIve Twice” or “The Spy Who Loved Me”? Eesh – the best movie adaptation has to be “L.A. Confidential”. The movie dispenses with the absurd faux-Disney heir serial killer subplot bollocks and what seems like page after skipped page of police reports and just focuses on all the good stuff.

About a Boy was better than most book-to-film adaptations, but come on, cutting out the period-piece angle was criminal. It’s called fucking “About a Boy” for Christ’s sake. I loved the book, the movie was fine but totally milquetoast without the entire Cobain subplot. Even as far as Hornby adaptations go, it sucked that they changed the UK to the US for High Fidelity, but the movie still worked much better, I thought. It’s impossible to read the Jack Black character in High Fidelity without thinking of Jack Black now. Of course, both are far better than Fever Pitch. Either of them. Also, they just wrapped on a Long Way Down movie.